Remember Harvey’s? Stephenson’s? Chef recreates classic KC dishes, one pop-up at a time

Uniquely KC is a Star series exploring what makes Kansas City special. Are you feeling nostalgic for a Kansas City area restaurant that closed years ago? Share your memories, and we may write about the place in a future story.

Heavily tattooed and uneasy with authority, Rick Mullins is a veteran of what could be called the punk-to-chef pipeline.

He played in local bands in his teens, worked in local bars in his 20s (Buzzard Beach, the Riot Room), then got sober and turned to cooking in his 30s. He’s worked in the kitchens at Bluestem and Gram & Dun, and served for three years as executive chef at Cafe Sebastienne.

Now in his early 40s, Mullins is less enamored with the punishing lifestyle of a hardcore chef. He runs brunch at The Town Company, the stylish restaurant inside Hotel Kansas City.

“I go home at 4 p.m. every day,” he said. “I don’t have to work 60 hours a week anymore. I don’t have to carry the weight of running a kitchen. It lets me spend time on these other things that excite me.”

Lately, that’s Kansas City history. Working downtown every day got Mullins interested in the old buildings that surrounded him — and the long-lost restaurants that once inhabited them. He started spending time in historical research hubs like the Kansas City Public Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections room and the Kansas City Museum’s archives in Union Station, searching for information about the food scene of yore.

Inevitably, that has bled into Mullins’ cooking. In February at the Kansas City Museum, Mullins hosted an intimate pop-up dinner called “A Historic Exploration of Kansas City Cuisine” — a multi-course menu featuring his spin on classic Kansas City dishes. The second installment will be held later this month, with 10-to-12-person dinners scheduled for three nights.

The pop-ups are part of a larger project Mullins calls Redbud Kansas City.

“It’s intended to just be a creative outlet for me — a way to think about the city, its food, and the ingredients you find in this region,” he said. “I find the idea of a brick-and-mortar restaurant to be a little limiting for my interests, so Redbud is a way to explore things that are maybe a little more meaningful to me.”

For the first KC-themed dinner, Mullins relied on old menus he found in the library, used books by local historians like Andrea Broomfield, and the advice of knowledgeable friends like former Star food critic Jill Silva. He led with a take on the wings at the Peanut, widely praised as the best in town (sometimes the country).

“There was a bit of personal connection to that choice, because my wife and I basically met at Hip-Hop and Hot Wings,” Mullins said, referring to a popular weekly party held in the 2000s at the downtown Peanut. “I treated the sauce the same way they do: It’s just Frank’s hot sauce, butter and an enormous amount of pepper. But I also used fermented carrots and dill-pickle celery to accompany it.”

Jasper Mirabile shared with Mullins the original recipe to Capelli d’Angelo alla Nanni, a favorite at Jasper’s since it opened 70 years ago; Mullins swapped out the prosciutto for a Missouri ham. “And he uses angel hair, which I can’t hand-make, so I made the pasta more generic,” he said.

Next up: a KC strip with a loaded baked potato, followed by Chicken Maciela, a popular dish at Harvey’s Westport Room, which closed in Union Station in 1968. “It was named after a maître D’ there. I found the recipe a few places online, but it’s hard to know how reliable those sources are. So there’s a fair amount of interpretation going on.”

For dessert, Mullins made apple fritters, a nod to the dish at Stephenson’s Apple Farm, which closed in 2007. He stayed mostly true to the recipe, sourcing local apples and using wheat and rye flour from Marion Milling in the West Bottoms.

The menu for the June dinners is still being finalized, Mullins said. He mentioned a few possibilities: a play on the chicken spiedini at Garozzo’s, a nod to the tenderloin at Kitty’s Cafe. It will most likely feature barbecue, though — he’s been thinking a lot about Henry Perry, the city’s original pitmaster.

“He would barbecue possum, raccoon, squirrel, mutton,” Mullins said. “I won’t make people at this dinner eat squirrel, so mutton seemed like a good option, but it’s hard to find local mutton. So most likely I’ll barbecue a leg of lamb. I’m still looking for Henry’s original sauce recipe, to see if there’s a flavor profile I could work from. But because of the underrepresentation of minorities, so much of the early history of KC barbecue has been lost.”

During the pop-ups, Mullins converses with guests about the significance of the dishes as well as the past and future of Kansas City’s food scene. He’s romantic about the former, bullish on the latter.

“The local (food movement) thing has been happening for a while, but I think more recently you’re seeing a cool push of chefs — at The Town Company, The Campground, The Antler Room, Waldo Thai, some others — putting out these really beautiful plates where the food is local and honors cultural traditions but is also really modern,” Mullins said.

“I don’t really like literal interpretations of stuff from the past,” he added. “That was then, this is now.”

The next Redbud KC dinners are scheduled for June 20, 22 and 23 at the Kansas City Museum. Tickets are $105 (and moving fast). They’re available at kansascitymuseum.org.

Uniquely KC is a Star series exploring what makes Kansas City special. Are you feeling nostalgic for a Kansas City area restaurant that closed years ago? Share your memories with David Hudnall, dhudnall@kcstar.com, and we may write about the place in a future story.